A bouquet is the subject of Michal Goldman Reeb’s tempera paintings exhibition. A huge, spectacular bouquet of wildflowers that she received inspired this series by Michal Goldman Reeb. The bouquet Goldman chose to immortalize is not bound in the decorative manner characteristic of birthday bouquets. It is a freely mischievous bouquet, devout of color or form matching, wild and tempestuous, alive and rich.

Observing and realizing her helplessness vis-à-vis the withering and vanishing, Goldman weaves the bouquet’s fleeting life in the studio. She bestows upon it an exciting existence and eternal life by decomposing the bundle and creating unconventional compositions: placing vases of diverse sizes, shapes and materials on top of each other, near each other, on top of clay pots and empty receptacles, spreading the flowers, adding and regenerating.

Goldman gathers elements from bouquet paintings throughout the history of art – black wall background from Caravaggio, 17th century focused Flemish lighting, Lucian Freud paint tainted work table and studio floor, a radiant isolated leaf mid-frame from Hockney – and weaves shriveled flower remnants into a bouquet heartening in its Eretzisraeli frugality, to interlace drama and mystery into a worn-out genre, thus establishing an individual interpretation to flower paintings, unfaithful to botanics, flower anatomy or national flora handbook.

Tempera concocting, canvas adhesion to plywood, and the rapid work technique dictated by the tempera, are as poetic as the work itself: seizing the moment and at the same time weaving affinity and respect to the past.

Closing: 11.02.17